Brave or Foolish?
September 17, 2007
The weekend was, for the most part, very predictable with The Brave One opening a little softer that expected while D-War opened a little stronger. However, overall there are not many surprises worth talking about. This includes the overall box office, which brought in $79 million over the weekend. This was 1% lower than last weekend, but 1% above the same weekend last year. However, at this pace the box office's winning streak over last year will end next weekend.
As expected, The Brave One became the latest Jodie Foster film to top the charts, making it the fourth wide release in a row for her to top the chart. On the other hand, the film only managed $13.47 million in 2,755 theaters for an average of $4,890. Add in sub-par reviews and it is unlikely this film will have the kind of legs most Jodie Foster projects have. Look for $35 to $40 million, which is barely more than half of original expectations.
3:10 to Yuma was slightly stronger than expected during its second weekend of release, but with $8.93 million it was within a rounding error of expectations. Overall the film has brought in $28.33 million and in still tracking for $55 million overall.
Third place went to Mr. Woodcock with $8.76 million, which was slightly more than School For Scoundrels opened with last year. That's a bit of a shock as this film earned even worse reviews than that one did. Even more puzzling is the film's internal multiplier of 3.07 indicating good word-of-mouth. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming weeks.
Superbad was also within a rounding error of Thursday's expectations, adding $5.11 million over the weekend for a total of $111.24 million. This puts it about a week away from overtaking Ghost Rider for 19th place for the year.
D-War landed on the high end of expectations, grabbing fifth place with $5.04 million over the weekend. However, with bad reviews and a per theater average of just $2,222, I don't expect it to last a long time in theaters.
Moving onto the sophomore class, Shoot 'Em Up was the best of the rest but it still fell out of the top ten with just $2.60 million over the weekend and $10.36 million in total. Given the film's reviews and the aggressive marketing push, this is a disappointing result. However, it is Titanic-like compared to The Brothers Solomon. That film had one of the worst sophomore stint drop-offs since box office records were kept as it plummeted 80.29% to just $100,230 in 700 theaters over the weekend. That gave it just a $143 per theater average while its total of $816,989 would have been a terribly disappointing opening.
Finally, it was a milestone weekend for Evan Almighty as it crossed $100 million, finally. It has had a sub-$1,000 per theater average for seven weekends now, which leads one to believe the studio was encouraging theater owners to keep it on longer by offering deals for other films.
Filed under: Superbad, Evan Almighty, The Brave One, Mr. Woodcock, Shoot 'Em Up, Dragon Wars: D-War, The Brothers Solomon, 3:10 to Yuma